


Stones Could Fly

by sadlikeknives



Category: Dixon's Girl - Dessa (Song)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, F/F, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-10
Updated: 2014-12-10
Packaged: 2018-02-28 20:45:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2746433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadlikeknives/pseuds/sadlikeknives
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Well, I heard from the rest of the world you're in trouble...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stones Could Fly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [salifiable](https://archiveofourown.org/users/salifiable/gifts).



I first learned about it from a coded info drop, though I didn't process it at the time. I'd never known her code name to put a face to _Dixon's burned the Beekeeper,_ another tidbit dropped among dozens, not as relevant to my current situation as some, and not that uncommon, besides. Dixon's burned people all the time, especially their girls. Any time it was easier than actually doing right by them, it seemed.

A few weeks later I was having lunch with an asset from another agency when he mentioned, "I can't believe Dixon's burned the Beekeeper, she was amazing in Jackson," and then I remembered.

Jackson wasn't Jackson, just like the Beekeeper I'd always thought of as the Dixon's Girl wasn't The Beekeeper (wasn't even a Dixon's Girl any more).

They were always Girls, the women who worked for Dixon's. It started from the top, that was what their agency called them. Certainly anywhere else, calling a female operative a 'girl' would get you shot in the balls. Even if there weren't that many women in this business that I liked, they demanded respect. Dixon's refused to grant it. Everyone knew it, but what the hell were we supposed to do about it, when girls kept signing up to work for them?

Jackson was, in our line of work, the commonly accepted code name for a certain city in a certain former Eastern Bloc country. I'd met the Dixon's Girl at an exchange—a rap show, in our parlance—in the basement of an old church. There was something different on the sign, but everyone still called it Saint Sebastian's. We'd barely gotten past the shitty cocktails portion of the event to 'everyone pretends not to notice everyone else flagrantly cheating at cards,' which, for reasons I had never really understood, always seemed to have to precede actually getting down to business. I remembered exchanging a look over my cards with the Dixon's Girl, the only other woman at the rap show: _Men_. She'd been good. I swore even the walls listened when she talked, which probably wasn't just my imagination; no way that place _wasn't_ bugged six ways to Sunday. She’d been playing her mark like a piano, and he’d been letting her. Again, men. There were things a pretty girl could get away with in this business no one else could. I didn’t know how Dixon’s got away with treating them the way they did.

And then the snowstorm started, cops who thought they were raiding a mob gathering busting down the door, bullets flying. I remembered the Dixon's Girl with her back to the wall, shouting into her phone for an extraction we both knew wasn't coming, firing with the other hand, rock steady even though she'd drunk more than most of the men there, just like I had. We had to, if we'd wanted to be respected.

"Damn," I said. "I liked her."

He laughed. "You? You don't like anyone."

"She could hold her liquor," I said, and changed the subject. I still needed information out of him, and it was nearly time for dessert.

When I got home, I coded a message carefully and sent it to a number that not even my handler knew I had in my phone, that probably didn't work any more (it would be hilarious, I thought before I sent it, if it had been reassigned to some jerk who'd want in my pants): _Heard about your situation. Hit me up sometime when you're in the area, I'll buy you a drink._

I was honestly not expecting her to take me up on it, but a week later she dropped down onto the stool beside me, all blonde hair and curves (The hair was a wig. It had been black in Jackson. The curves were one hundred percent authentic, though.), ordered a whiskey sour, and jerked her thumb toward me. "She's paying." I nodded agreement to the bartender, and she asked me, "Is this a recruitment pitch?" point blank.

I was surprised for a second, I mean, I hadn't thought about it like that, but, "I have not been authorized to recruit you, but sure, it could be. You wouldn't be the weirdest thing I dragged in by _far_."

She smirked at me. "Is that so." It wasn't quite a question.

"Well, you know," I said, shrugging. "The business."

"The business," she agreed, and knocked back half her whiskey sour when the bartender put it in front of her. Then she winced, which, to be fair, was most people's first reaction to this place's drinks. "That is terrible."

"Best one in town," I told her. I wasn't lying, either.

"It's gonna piss them off if you bring me in, you know."

"I don't know that I care what pisses off Dixon's."

The Dixon's Girl who wasn't a Dixon's Girl any more, who probably wasn't even going by the codename of Beekeeper any more, studied me for a long moment, and then she decided, "I'll think about it." Then she asked me, "You got a name I can call you? Besides 'Seamstress?'"

I gave her one, and she gave me one. Neither of them was anything like our real names, of course. Neither of us was born yesterday. We stayed at the bar for a couple more rounds, and then I suggested, "I have a bottle of marginally better wine at my apartment."

"Fuck, yes," she agreed, and then she let me take her to a second location, the surest sign of trust in our business.

Her hair, underneath the wig, was tightly pinned up and red, which was a surprise.

Later, laying in my bed, which was just a mattress on the floor, we listened to my neighbors practicing the violin through the building's extremely thin walls, and she said almost dreamily, "I used to play the cello."

"I'm not an expert or anything, but I'm pretty sure that's a violin."

She hit me weakly. "I know that, jackass. But I used to play the cello."

"Yeah?" I asked. "Were you any good?"

She stole my cigarette from me and grinned. "Better than this."

"It would be hard to be worse," I pointed out, and she laughed, the first real laugh I'd heard from her. Something twisted in my stomach.

"Yeah," she said. "I was pretty good." She took a drag off the cigarette before adding, "I'm better at being a spook, though." She sounded almost sad about it, as well she might. There was no time for music in our lives. “You put your whole life into something, and then one day it’s just...back to the drawing board. Again.”

I stole my cigarette back from her. “Fuck ‘em.”

In the morning, she let me cook her breakfast, even though I am absolutely fucking terrible in a kitchen. She assured me she was worse. I had to do the dishes, too, because dishes were something she didn't do.

She kissed me before she left, and told me, "I'll think about it, but don't think it's because you're such a great lay or anything." And then she smiled and said, "This was fun, we should do it again some time," and I knew I was so fucking doomed. "I was never here, right?"

"Someone asks me," I told her, "I ain't heard a thing," and she was gone. I wished, after she'd gone, that I'd told her I was rooting for her, that if I was a betting woman I'd have my money on her, but I told myself, _Next time_ , even though in our line of work next time was something you could never really count on.

When I finished the dishes, I swept the apartment for bugs, just in case.


End file.
